


Sorting It Out

by magelette



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magelette/pseuds/magelette
Summary: After Simon goes off to school and Gumerry dies, Jane finds herself with a hole in her life she'd like to fill. Post-Silver on the Tree.
Relationships: Bran Davies/Jane Drew
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Sorting It Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marien/gifts).



The house was quiet, now that Simon was away at school. It wasn’t that Simon was loud or noisy or any of those other unwanted brotherly characteristics, but that Jane missed his solid presence in her life. Barney gave himself more and more over to art as he faced his eleventh birthday, and Mother and Father were caught up in their own worlds of painting and medicine, but Jane just felt…lost. She and Simon had been in step for most of their lives, with just over a year between the two of them in age. While he’d always been ahead of her at school, they’d spent most of their childhood chasing after the same things. Even though they hadn’t gone to the same school in several years, now that Simon was at boarding school studying for his GCSEs, the house felt a little more lonely.

Mother actually noticed, which surprised Jane. Usually Mother, like Barney, tended to be lost in her own flights of fantasy. Father joked that Simon was the pragmatist, Barney the dreamer, and Jane somewhere lost on the sea of emotion in between. Without Simon to balance out Barney’s whimsy, Jane was having a hard time remembering where her place was. It wasn’t because she loved her brother more than anything; that was far too Victorian a notion for their practical, twentieth-century, London-dwelling family. It was just that she and Barney and Simon had always been a trio, and without the third side of their triangle, they drifted.

“Do you miss your brother that much, darling?” Mother said as they sat at the table for tea one evening. Barney was at the park, theoretically playing football, but Jane knew that was just his excuse to sit and sketch without anyone getting too in-his-face about it. Even now, he still had trouble accepting his penchance for art, almost in the same way that Jane had trouble accepting Simon’s leaving.

“No…” Jane said reluctantly, drawing the answer out as she had when she was a child. “It’s just… it’s a lot, Mother. Change. Simon gone. Gumerry…”

Mother’s face softened, and she put one paint-spattered hand to Jane’s cheek. “None of us expected Gumerry’s loss, darling. We’re all a little out of sorts because of it.”

But it wasn’t just the death of their great-uncle. Gumerry had bounced in and out of their lives for decades. Life was lacking, now, though, that the sheer anticipation of Gumerry randomly showing up had faded. There would be no more summers with Gumerry in Cornwall or Wales. There would be no more adventures. Jane shook her head, trying to grasp whatever hazy memory was eluding her. Wales.

“Could we go back to Wales someday, Mother?”

Mother paused in the middle of pouring herself a second cup of tea. Usually it was Jane and Barney’s job to get food on the table, especially when Mother was in one of her painting frenzies. Ever since Simon had gone away to school, both Father and Mother had made a more concerted effort to be home and available at mealtimes, as if they too realized how much their family had changed without Simon. Jane was as surprised as Mother at her request – why would she want to go back to Wales?

“Didn’t you make a friend there, Jane? Not Will Stanton – his cousin?”

Jane didn’t bother trying to explain that Bran Davies was less a cousin and more of a family friend, if the children of hired hands could be family friends. “We did, Mother. All three of us.” Barney had taken to Bran more than she or Simon had. Simon had issues with anyone who was possibly older, smarter, taller, or anything ‘better’ than what Simon Drew could do, at least at the first meeting. Jane, also, had kept back from the strange Welsh boy, not because of his looks, but because of his attitude. She distinctly remembered yelling at him for thinking he was so special, and tried hard not to blush. They’d parted friends, but with no expectation of ever seeing one another. Will and Bran were attached at the hip, and while Will had written the three of them jolly letters after Cornwall and Wales both, there had been no expectations of similar correspondence with Bran of all people.

Bran, though. 

Mother and Father tried their best to be attentive parents, but Jane and her brothers had grown up with the idea that they would make their own fun and take care of their own business. Jane had liked tall, slim, pale Bran. His image still burned in her mind sometimes, like one of those mythic kings that Barney loved to paint. Once they’d gotten past the “I’m Welsh, you’re English, and I’m obligated to hate you” narrative, he’d actually been a good sport: as witty as Will, as quick with a retort as Simon, even if he wasn’t quite as easy to laugh with as Barney. 

Bran Davies.

She still had his contact information, because Will, bless his optimistic heart, had insisted that they all exchange addresses. Will’d actually written Simon a letter at school, much to everyone’s surprise. Will the Watchman, Barney dubbed him, the guardian of their group to make sure that they all stayed in contact. 

“Would it be odd, Mother, to write a letter to Bran?” Jane asked casually. She was at that age, apparently, when girls of her age turned their thoughts toward boys. Several of the girls in her year spoke of boyfriends and dates, and oh, isn’t he a dream. Jane still had a hard problem seeing boys like that. Maybe because, in the end, they all seemed like her brothers. Or maybe because her brothers had always seen her as their equal, just as capable and hearty as they were.

Mother looked at her with affection in her clear blue eyes, her light brown hair falling into her paint-streaked face. “We’re modern women, Jane Drew. We wait for no man,” Mother said with a slight smile on her face. “It wasn’t your father’s idea for us to get together, you know.”

Jane thought, for a moment, of trying to explain the whole lack of completion to Mother, and turning to Bran for possible companionship as a pen friend, but figured it wasn’t worth the effort. Thankfully, Mother was not one of those parents who tried to marry her daughter off to whatever male acquaintance passed through her life. And if Mother wanted to dwell on the pretense that Jane was seeking male companionship for other reasons, well… Jane had ambitions as long as Simon’s in her secret heart of hearts, and getting married to a future Welsh sheep farmer at the ripe old age of thirteen was not one of them. 

Mother seemed to sense that some sort of decision had been made, and her attention wandered to whatever painting she was working on for her next gallery show in November. Jane tidied up the table before heading back up to her room. She looked around at the tidy piles of papers and books, all battling for shelf-space with her stuffed animals and games. She sat idly at her desk, not sure of what to do. Next to the small bluish stone that Bran had thrust into her first at the end of summer was a stationery set that her well-meaning grandmother had given her for her thirteenth birthday, insisting that “proper young women kept well-maintained correspondence,” and that one never knew when a connection might come in handy. The cream-colored paper and envelopes were heavy and tasteful, but as boring as one of those awful Victorian novels Granny always tried to get her to read.

Bran Davies.

Maybe it was worth getting to know the future Welsh sheep farmer a little better… She was, what would Granny call it? “Expanding her horizons?”

She picked up a pencil and began to write, “Dear Bran…”


End file.
